Utilizing Social Media To Supplement Your Market Reach and Add New Customers

Social media is very relevant if you are an online marketer. Using social media to your best advantage however takes skill, refinement, experience and most of all adaptation. You need to be able to adapt to changing trends, life styles and the way your consumers are consuming their media. Identifying trends is the key here.

Social media now even influences the news. Take for example the deflate-gate example. News sites, aggregators, networks all pulled peoples opinions from Tweets and Facebook. News fed off of social media which in turn fueled more social media. What lessons can be learned from this:
1) If your brand is under fire:
If your brand is under fire do not say nothing at all. The Patriots answered and used social media to their advantage and it got everyone talking. Granted this is a matter of scale here and doubtful you can reach the scale they did, but you can replicate this on a scale that is more your level. The old adage that “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all,” does not apply here when your service, goods or character are under fire.

2) Expect to make a difference but not turn the tide:
If your brand comes under attack like the Patriots did you can expect to change some views by being proactive. While negative comments and the like will draw much more traffic and buzz you can dilute the impact of anything negative thrown your way by putting a positive spin on anything and engaging people instead of keeping quite.

3) Twitter and Facebook are content discovery engines:
Social media is now consumed outside of social media sites. mew outlets routinely pick up on social media postings via screen captures. Social media is a vital part of your news, public relations and press release strategy. Due to this any content you post has the chance to be picked up by more outlets, giving you exposure to markets that might not have otherwise discovered you and your brand message. To take advantage of this post often and stay relevant and on topic and to the point which leads us to tip number four below.

4) Do not be long winded in your posts and content.
If you are too long winded with your content people will not bother with it on social media as much. Your video content, sound bytes, and pictures with text will do better than long winded articles or posts. if you want to be relevant and your news to be talked about more often and shared you need to keep it short and simple. Short and simple content gets shared on a much larger basis than long or even mid word count articles. If you do make a social media writing post try and keep it to under 200 words at most.

5) Be where your market is
If you are using social media go where your market is. If you promote very tech savvy things Reddit might be a good avenue for example. Learn the norms and rules and trends of each social media outlet, every outlet differs and has different expectations not to mention demographics. it pays to research what sites various people in your target demographics make the most use of and in what way they make use of these sites.

All in all social media is vital to your success but it is just another tool in your arsenal, not the end all be all. A good SEO firm can always assist you with social media marketing and devise a social media campaign suited for your needs and goals.